Rolls-Royce Designer Picks Iconic Design Classic Moulton Bike Graham Hull Alex Moulton

Описание: Rolls-Royce and Bentley Head Designer Graham Hull picks one of his favorite and most innovative designs - a Moulton Bicycle. He owns and uses a Moulton bike to this day and talks passionately about the design icon that both the Moulton bike is and it's inventor, Sir Alex Mouton.

During World War II he worked on engine design at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. After the war he joined the family company, which made rubber components such as suspension parts for railway carriages; he turned it towards rubber suspension systems for road vehicles.

In the mid 1950s, Moulton developed an experimental rubber suspension which was tested on a Morris Minor. His friend Alec Issigonis heard of this work and together they designed a fluid and rubber suspension for a new Alvis car, which did not reach production. Moulton also designed "Flexitor" rubber springs for the 1958 Austin Gipsy, an off-road vehicle.

After the family business was acquired by the Avon Rubber Company in 1956, Moulton established Moulton Developments Limited to design the suspension system for British Motor Corporation's new small car, the Mini, that was being designed by Issigonis. The combination of conical rubber springs and small wheels was one of the many innovative developments that allowed Issigonis to achieve the Mini's small overall size. This was later refined into the hydrolastic and hydragas suspension systems used on later British Leyland cars such as the Austin Maxi, Austin Allegro, Princess and Rover Metro, and later on Rover Group's MG F sports car.

Moulton also designed the Moulton bicycle, launched in 1962, again using rubber suspension and small wheels. A factory was built at Bradford-on-Avon, and Moulton Bicycles Ltd soon became the second-largest frame builder in the country.

Under Moulton's will, the Grade I listed Hall – along with investments, land, outbuildings and cottages – was gifted to a charitable trust. In 2020 the trust was reorganised as a charitable incorporated organisation, the Alex Moulton Charitable Trust, which continues to preserve and maintain the Hall and its collections, and promote engineering and design.

The Moulton Bicycle name has undergone several changes of ownership. Since 2008 the name has been used by a privately held company which has a small modern factory just east of the Hall.

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